Chapter 9
“Shhh, it’s okay, baby,” he said, feeling completely useless as he knelt there, rubbing her back and pushing her long wet hair over her shoulder.
“P-pill,” she said between gasps as she hung her head, closed her eyes and breathed in slowly while it took him a moment to figure out what she wanted.
Her pill…
Shit!
Of course she needed her pill and he was kneeling on the floor like an idiot. She was supposed to have one every twelve hours and she hadn’t had one since she woke up yesterday morning. She’d been so terrified of being laid out another day with morning sickness that she’d practically jumped from the bed and dove for the bottle of pills.
He should have tried harder to wake her up earlier, given her a pill and made her eat something to make sure that it didn’t upset her stomach. Instead he’d been so focused on giving her the perfect honeymoon that he’d fucked up and had forgotten to take care of her.
Now she was paying for his mistake.
Some husband he was turning out to be, he realized, shaking his head in disgust as he pushed her hair out of her face, awkwardly got to his feet in the cramped bathroom, turned around and within seconds realized that the bathroom door was locked.
“Shit,” he groaned, because this was just getting better and better.
“W-what?” Zoe managed to get out before she started dry heaving again.
“Nothing,” he said, praying that was true, because otherwise things were about to get a lot more fucking interesting.
He tightened his grip on the latch and tried to yank it up, but it wouldn’t move. He wiggled it, put his weight against the door and yanked, but the damn door wouldn’t move. Not one single fucking inch.
“T-Trevor?” she said, sounding absolutely miserable as she sat on the tiled floor and leaned back against the wall with a small groan. “What’s wrong?”
He yanked on the handle and shoved on the door, but the damn thing wouldn’t budge. “Shit,” he said, closing his eyes in defeat as he dropped his forehead against the door and for the first time in his life, wondered if all those stories that his uncles and cousins had told him over the years might be more than just typical Bradford bullshit.
A Bradford curse, he thought with a snort of disbelief as he closed his eyes and banged his head against the door. A fucking Bradford curse…
“What’s wrong?” Zoe asked with a slight groan as she pulled her knees up, wrapped her arms around her indrawn knees and promptly dropped her head on her knees.
He shook his head as he pushed away from the door. “You wouldn’t believe me even if I told you,” he said, shaking his head as he turned around and dropped down on his ass next to his wife.
“Try me,” she muttered as she leaned over until her body was pressed up against his.
He put his arm around her and kissed the top of her head. “It’s just bullshit.”
“Is the door jammed?” she mumbled against her arm as he pulled her closer.
“Yes,” he reluctantly admitted, feeling like an ass for somehow managing to lock them in the bathroom.
There was a heavy sigh before she pointed out, “Then we have plenty of time for you to enlighten me.”
Knowing that he was going to sound like an idiot and wondering why he was telling her this, he kissed the top of her head and decided to share something that he had to admit had actually scared him when he was a kid. Like most of his cousins, he’d always thought that the men in his family were bullshitting him to amuse themselves, but even believing that it was all bullshit hadn’t stopped him from worrying about the day when he actually got married and tried to take his wife on a honeymoon.
He’d always tried to tell himself that it was bullshit and for the most part he’d believed it, especially since he knew how much joy the men in his family took in fucking with the younger generation’s heads, but there was another part of him, the one that still made sure that at least one light was on when he watched a horror flick that had always been terrified that it might actually be true. When Jason came over to remind him of this curse, he’d brushed it off, deciding that it didn’t apply to him, because he’d done something no other Bradford had done before.
He’d brought in professional help.
The others had made half-assed, fucked up plans on their own, waiting until after they’d tricked their brides into saying, “I do,” before deciding where to take their new wives to make up for the terrifying experience they’d put them through getting them to the altar. He’d been so damn positive that he’d figured out where they’d gone wrong, figured out how to do this right that he’d instantly dismissed the possibility that the same fate awaited him.
He’d been so damn sure of himself…
He’d done everything right, made sure to leave all the decisions in the hands of a professional, someone who knew how to find the best places, the best deals, knew which cruise line had the best reputation, the best times to travel and most importantly, he’d made sure that she’d never planned a vacation for another Bradford, which had made her perfect. She was untouched by the Bradford curse so any trip that she planned for them should have been safe.
This trip had been nothing but a fucking nightmare from the start. Zoe was carrying twins and having a hell of a time doing it. When she wasn’t starving, she was sick, and when she wasn’t sick, she was fucking exhausted. He thought with the help of the pills that his uncle had prescribed for her that she would at least be able to enjoy the cruise, relax, catch up on her sleep and just enjoy herself.
Instead thanks to him, she hadn’t had the chance to rest or relax since she’d spent the last few days taking care of him, making sure that he got to the bathroom in time, keeping him hydrated, running her fingers through his hair when he thought that he was going to die, holding his hand when the stomach cramps became too much, violently shovinglore pills down his throat when he refused to take them, and had spent most of the morning navigating a tropical island trying to fill a prescription for him when she should have been relaxing on the beach with the rest of the passengers.
Once the medication kicked in, he’d hoped to salvage what was left of their honeymoon, but unfortunately she passed out before he could pull out all the stops and properly romance her. During the entire time that he’d been falling in love with her, he’d failed to show her just how much she’d come to mean to him. He’d treated her like a fuck buddy when she’d been so much more than that. He’d planned on rectifying that on this trip, but nothing seemed to be going his way.
Every time that he got a chance to do right by her something else would happen to fuck up his plans. Morning sickness, seasickness, exhaustion and now it seemed that they were trapped in their suite bathroom without her pills. For a minute he considered trying to break the door down, but quickly realized that there wouldn’t be enough room to allow him to slam into the door and do any real damage. He could try yelling, but he doubted that anyone would be able to hear him. Since the cabin steward wouldn’t be checking on the room until later in the morning, this was going to make for a long, interesting night, especially since he’d just realized that his patch had fallen off and his medication was on the nightstand right alongside Zoe’s.
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“Are you going to start talking?” she asked, squeezing her eyes shut tightly as she waited for the nausea to pass.
“Give me a second,” Trevor said roughly, cluing her into the fact that she wasn’t the only one struggling not to give in and lunge for the toilet.
“Are you o-”
“I’m fine,” he promised her, cutting her off before she could finish and gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze, silently asking her to just let it go.
“So, this bullshit?” she reminded him, hoping that it would be enough to distract herself from the fact that she was starting to feel hungry, which of course was aggravating her morning sickness, which promised to be a good time.
He chuckled weakly as he pressed his lips against the top of her head. “You really want to know?”
“Wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t,” she pointed out on a small gasp as she desperately fought against the urge to drop onto her side, curl up into a ball and pray for a quick, painless death.
The long-suffering sigh would have normally had her rolling her eyes, but she just didn’t have it in her at the moment. “Fine, but remember that I didn’t make this bullshit up.”
“Duly noted,” she said, matching his sigh as she turned her head and opened her eyes so that she could look at him as he shared this riveting tale with her.
What she saw had her biting her lip as a wave of sympathy hit her right around the time that another wave of nausea slammed into her, making her close her eyes as her heart broke for him. The last couple of days had been pure hell for him, but he’d done it for her. He knew how much having a real vacation meant to her so he was putting himself through hell to make it happen for her. He really was a sweet man, she thought as she tried to think of anything else